


Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me

by keio



Series: A Hatful of Hollow [1]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Overworking, Unrequited Love, as usual Enjolras doesn't get it, burn - Freeform, inebriation, somnambulism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:04:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keio/pseuds/keio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras needs to plan, plan, plan his revolution. Who needs sleep, after all? Sleeping is for children, and inebriated idiots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me

Enjolras dreams only when he is awake. None of that romantic nonsense that descended on the unconscious as they waded about the murk of sleep. He probably did, he thought, once, long ago, and to an embarrassing end: scratches on the soles of his feet that appeared mysteriously in the day; doors half-opened and creaking in the wind; the smell of dried urine trickling down a skinny leg. Not that he remembered anything, save for the difficult return to sleep that, more often than not, had him stiff and wide-eyed on his side until daybreak. 

 

These days found him too exhausted to remember he’d actually slept, sometimes in the awkwardest places he never would have expected to nod off in. When he woke it was always with a jolt and the regret that he may have missed out on something important. Jehan always laughed that he tended to simply slip away from his body, which was on the side of too poetic, but surely not unexpected. 

 

“You are like a musical box,” Jehan explained one evening after the more difficult part of planning propaganda had been put to the side, and they were friends and students once more, “all carrying on resiliently one second like you were indeed at court, then winding down as the clockwork does, slow down to a hum, and then...” He would make whimsical gestures with his hands, “...slip away from your body like a thief from a house.” 

 

Enjolras does admit to succumbing to spells of dozing every now and then, which became inconvenient especially when he was caught in a spell of patriotic fervor. There was simply so much to do, and so little of the ABC committed enough (in his opinion) to do it! Joly did warn him to at least get six hours a day in, as it would run his body and mind down in the long term. 

 

This was when Grantaire piped in with, “Well I for one do not want my dear leader dozing off in the  middle of an exciting exchange with the king’s men. That’s my job.” It was a joke, naturally, wine-slurred at the edges but full of Grantaire’s hit-and-miss humour, which hit the crowd gathered at the basement like a good sneeze. The light-hearted laughter that followed masked Enjolras’s dimmer, colder realisations: that he would be incapacitated when the revolution needed him most, and all because of a body that he’d failed to maintain. 

 

Enjolras’s dreams walk with him in wakefulness. They softly covered the world of the waking even as he walked upon it: working class crowds mingling without care or trouble in affluent hotels, food overflowing in the wet markets, students holding hands along the Champs-Élysées. It frustrated him sometimes to see that this had not happened yet. The fury kindled the fires he kept high and fed in his heart. 

 

“What do you see then?” 

 

It was a nippy spring evening, and the wet slush from the snows that had passed still clung blackly in the spaces between the cobblestones. Enjolras was tired. He was careful to keep to the shadows of buildings, and to the drier scraps of street underfoot. Grantaire was a warm, breathing weight on his left side. 

How did this happen again? he thought dazedly; Ah yes. A meeting where they discussed blurbs for another campaign. People leaving early in an attempt to beat the downpour; himself left behind because he'd wanted to finish scanning one more document, and, seeing the veritable sheets of water outside, decided to stay until it slowed or at least came to an abrupt stop; the until-then forgotten figure stirring in the corner, _of course_ Grantaire dozing off after a drunken spell. Had _he_ fallen asleep as well, between the time Combeferre and Courfeyrac had taken their leave, and when he'd approached their resident cynic, wordlessly hauling Grantaire to his feet? 

 

He turned his head with an incredulous look, almost bumped his nose against Grantaire’s. Who blinked and smiled lazily, the scoundrel. 

 

“What?”

 

“What you see. When you look out there.” With his other hand (and much effort), Grantaire waved about them, the city in the limp, wet grip of a dismal season. The lamps blurred whatever the light reached, creating spectres in the streets, separating from buildings, making inky outlines against the walls. A breeze squeezed itself in between the buildings where they shuffled through, and it felt as if they were walking in circles.

 

For a terrible moment, Enjolras thought he had drifted off again: that he was in one of his childhood landscapes, rising from his bedclothes and taking sure, impossible steps down the staircase and out the kitchen door. What _had_ possessed him (and this was the proper term; he remembered someone inviting a priest over to check for signs of demon visitations) to sleep-walk out of his home all those evenings? What kept calling him out from the slumber of babes, a child in his nightshirt, barefoot and blonde, out to the scum-scabbed streets? 

 

He stopped, heart pounding, blinked hard several times, and bit his cheek. His knees locked, buckled. He did not want it to be a dream, he thought in panic. All the plans they had laid out, all the people they had inspired, the new barristers who had sent them tokens of appreciation. He did not want to wake up in a room that wasn’t his own, dressed and indolently peaceful, and discover that all the things made him feel _alive_ weren’t real. 

 

“Oi. Dear leader. Enjolras. Oi. LOOK AT ME.” 

 

There was a sharp elbow to his rib, and Enjolras grunted, anger rustling him from his daydream. He whipped his head again to face Grantaire, and received a thorough bump on the forehead for it, knocking hard against his companion’s. A hand had come up to clumsily but gently cup the back of his head, keeping him in place. Grantaire had strange flecks of brown in his eyes from this close, and his lips were chapped. 

 

Enjolras willed his heart to slow. It was stupid to show weakness; he’d just forgotten Grantaire was there.  

 

“Better?”

 

“It— I—” he started, then grit his teeth. “It. Is nothing.” He exhaled a white cloud in Grantaire’s face, who was studying him now like a hawk. Well this didn’t do. _He_ was supposed to be the sober one.

 

“Better,” Grantaire nodded, and Enjolras’s head bobbed along with him. He pushed his now seemingly sober burden away from his face at the widening grin that followed. His brow was warm and smarted from the impromptu headbutt. The hand holding his nape vanished, and the merciless cool of Paris replaced it, prickling the soft damp hairs there. 

 

“What did the happy doctor tell you again?” 

 

Enjolras quickened his step, which had the result of him practically hauling Grantaire bodily beside him. The latter grunted as he adjusted, his legs not quite at a proper level of coordination just yet, tripping over themselves as they moved. To Enjolras’s chagrin, he kept talking. 

 

“Said you need to sleep at least seven hours a day, didn’t he. Said you can’t trick your body like you can trick a wind-up musical box, didn’t he. Said you can’t lead a kingdom spiriting out like that.” 

 

_No, YOU said that_ , he thought indignantly, but didn’t, and just scowled in response. Well, Joly _did_ say everything else, but how was Enjolras to pay attention when there were point people to keep track of, meetings to coordinate, that _obstinate_ printer to cajole? What was Grantaire’s business about it anyway? Wasn’t _he_ drunk _again_ when Joly started that thread—

 

“You’re supposed to be drunk,” he accused Grantaire, who, to Enjolras’s horror, threw his head back and laughed, long and hard. “Be quiet, you great idiot,” he snapped hotly, which only had his inebriated friend break into poorly-concealed snickering that lasted all throughout their walk. 

 

When they arrived at Grantaire’s hovel of an apartment (spiced with the smell of untended garbage from a wet grocer’s nearby), he had to admit his entire body felt like it had been rolled across the cobbles and trampled on by a merry party of Bonapartists. His nostrils flared in distaste as he tucked his half-dozing friend in, and envied the comfort of sleep that came so welcome to some people. 

 

At least, Enjolras thought embarrassedly, he’d daydreamed away from a meeting. What would the others think? Marius would never hold his respect if he “slipped away” in Joly’s words, like a bored schoolboy. At least the rest weren’t around to see it. 

 

At least it was just Grantaire. It was only ever just Grantaire. He’d forget it in the morning. 

 

As he lit one more candle to encourage warmth in the room, Enjolras thought of his own quarters across town, the new one Eponine had subtly suggested he move into before the old dormitories were checked. He thought of the long stretches of street that bled into each other, like corridors of a nightmare. He thought of the Inspector’s men, prowling the streets in pairs hungrily, looking for lonely stragglers. 

 

He wasn’t lonely, his mind insisted. He was only as Joly said, and it would be ten times more embarrassing to wake in the gutter where he’d swayed and slept on his feet (like a horse), like some streetwalker. He couldn’t lead a revolution like that. There was some room in the battered chaise on the coldest side of the room for a man to curl up comfortably. Just for a while, he promised himself. He would wake with the dawn before Grantaire, and be off. It was just a small sojourn.  _Like a thief in a house._

 

After all, someone had to make sure the fool didn’t choke in his saliva in the night, when Grantaire turned his head and laughed lowly, as if he knew something that made him very happy. 

  

 

**Author's Note:**

> — for EK again because FEELS SO MANY FEELS I CAN'T HANDLE THEM  
> — inadvertently Morrissey rears his sullen head. Title also tongue-in-cheek and deliberate as cheese on pasta.


End file.
